As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option available to users is information handling systems. An information handling system generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes thereby allowing users to take advantage of the value of the information. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements vary between different users or applications, information handling systems may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in information handling systems allow for information handling systems to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, or global communications. In addition, information handling systems may include a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems.
A Trusted Platform Module (TPM) is a hardware device that provides secure generation and storage of cryptographic keys for an information handling system, such as desktop computer, notebook computer, server, etc. A TPM also limits the use of cryptographic keys to signing (i.e., verification or encryption/decryption), as well as provides a Hardware Random Number Generator. Other capabilities of a TPM include remote attestation, sealing, binding, hardware authentication and sealed storage. Integrated into an information handling system platform, the TPM is part of the Core Root of Trust of the platform to ensure that the platform operates in a secure state, allowing it to remotely attest that the platform can be trusted based on a consideration of its hardware components (e.g., processor and chipset) and software components (e.g., operating system, firmware). TPMs have traditionally been permanently attached by soldering to the motherboard of the information handling system.
In some cases it may be desirable or required that different types of TPM devices be selected and employed for different end use applications, e.g., particular platforms destined for a given foreign country may be required to employ a TPM device that is manufactured and certified by that given foreign country. This requires providing different type system boards (i.e., with different types of corresponding TPM devices) for the same type of platform. The appropriate type of system board then must be selected during assembly of a given platform based on the intended end-use application for the given platform.